KCS Training
The KCS Academy administers KCS training and certification programs, including the KCS Certified Trainer program.
KCS Certified Trainers are authorized to provide commercial offerings including training and adoption services. KCS Certified Trainers go through a rigorous process to demonstrate they have a thorough understanding of the KCS methodology and best practices for adoption. They also have access to training materials that are continuously updated by the Consortium. KCS Certified Trainers pay a royalty for commercial use of the Consortium’s IP which helps support the ongoing work of the Consortium. The list of official KCS Certified Trainers can be found here.
If you are considering KCS training for you or your team, choosing a trainer certified by the KCS Academy ensures you are making the most of your investment.
Internal Training Guidance
[Provided by David Kay 10 September 2017]
For support analyst training, we recommend a four-hour, interactive, hands-on, instructor-led session, an hour of which can be replaced by KCS Academy online training. It's great to have some peer coaches in the room to help facilitate.
Before class, ask everyone to bring one or two cases they've worked recently that they think might be good candidates for a knowledge base article.
Suggested Agenda
- A brief presentation on the big ideas of KCS as well as why you're doing it (leverage your Strategic Framework) and what's in it for them (leverage your Communications Plan). This should take less than an hour with time for discussion. Good news: This section can also be provided by the new KCS Academy online KCS v6 Fundamentals training.
- Run them quickly through the Content Standard and Article Quality Checklist. (I like to hand out and use hardcopies, not slides.) Then, put up a deliberately broken KB article, facilitate their identifying things that aren't according to the Content Standard, and help them fix it on the projector in real time.
- Show a quick demo of knowledge capture in your case / incident tracking and KB environment. Your demo and words should emphasize capture in the workflow and structure for reuse. Keep it simple: you want to show how easy it is, not how many things you can do in the tool!
- [break]
- Ask a brave volunteer to take one of their cases and imagine they were creating an article in the workflow. Leverage the content standard. Facilitate things so as much coaching as possible comes from their peers - use appreciative inquiry. (In other words, try not to just tell them how to do it differently, although it's hard!)
- Do one or (I hope) two more articles in the remaining time. The first one is often pretty painful and slow, but they see how they get the hang of it over time.
- Congratulate them on being KCS Candidates, and encourage them to start practicing starting with the next incident they take!
The idea is to give them just enough information that they can practice and start working with their coaches with a sense of enthusiasm. No one expects them to leave the room good at this, so the real learning happens after the class.
P.S. I mentioned a few deliverables...if you don't have a Content Standard, Communications Plan, Article Quality Checklist, Strategic Framework, or a crisp demo of capture in the workflow, I'd lay that groundwork first.